Deadmau5 On The Video Game Inspiration For The “Professional Griefers” Music Video [Exclusive]

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In order to match the sheer epic scale of “Professional Griefers,” the turbocharged collaboration between Deadmau5 (AKA Joel Zimmerman) and Gerard Way of My Chemical Romance, 2,000 on-set extras and months of post-production work have gone into crafting the music video that goes with it.

Coined “the highest budget electronic music video of all time” in a freshly released behind-the-scenes clip, the video for “Professional Griefers” was a topic of discussion during the exclusive Deadmau5 interview by KROQ jock Stryker.

“We shot it here in lovely Los Angeles in frickin’ 300 degree heat during a solar eclipse,” Deadmau5 recalled during the interview. “It was really fun. We had some 2000 extras from fan invites. It was really cool, but the real magic actually happened in post-production over the last six months. It’s funny, because we shot the video in two days, and I actually got back cut pretty much finished video within in a week. But the (computer-generated imagery) took eight months.”

The video, which features Deadmau5 and Gerard Way as future-shocked UFC combatants using controllers to power two giant Deadmau5 robots in battle, was informed by Zimmerman’s love for old-school video games, particularly ’90s Japanese Nintendo title Chrono Trigger.

“There’s a robot called Gato, and he’s just like this tubby, kind of big fight-testing robot,” Deadmau5 explained to Stryker. “So you would go into an encounter in the game with this robot, and the robot would basically train you. I really wanted (the Deadmau5 robots) to have that look, be really clunky and post-apocalyptic.”

The completed music video for “Professional Griefers” is scheduled to debut on August 29, while the upcoming Deadmau5 full-length, Album Title Goes Here, is set to drop on September 25.